Clapton Transcendent In Knight Center Show

April 18, 1985|By Scott Benarde, Music Writer

Eric Clapton isn`t getting older, he`s getting better. As an aside, he`s looking better, too. He looked nothing less than sophisticated and handsome when he stepped onstage at the Knight Center in Miami Tuesday night in a milk- white suit and strapped a blue Stratocaster guitar over his shoulder.

His guitar playing was beyond sophisticated; it was supernatural. He doesn`t play the guitar, he seduces it.

He is not called ``Slowhand`` for nothing. With an economy of motion, with a surprising ease and calmness, Eric Clapton is able to create a spectrum of moods and emotion. He is more than a player, he is a communicator. And for 2 1/2 hours Tuesday night he certainly felt like letting his fingers do the talking.

It doesn`t really matter whether or not Clapton has been this hot his whole tour or if he felt particularly comfortable playing in a city where he has has recorded some of his best work and has many friends. Either way, it was the audience`s gain. In fact, Miami guitarist George Terry, who toured with Clapton for several years and now works with the Bee Gees, joined the band for the night. Having a hometown boy on stage only heightened the rapport between Clapton and the sellout crowd of 5,000.

He won the audience right away opening with Living on Tulsa Time, but it wasn`t which songs he played as much as how he played and sounded. His singing was so confident -- healthy, really -- that one needn`t have been a detective to suspect something special might be unfolding.

Any doubt that this wasn`t going to be a stellar performance was erased by the third song, Bob Marley`s I Shot the Sheriff. Clapton`s singing became more passionate and he began to court his guitar, soloing with both grace and power.

He performed a half-dozen songs from his new album, Behind the Sun, but oddly enough the album`s hit single, Forever Man, was not among them. The new songs should have been recorded Tuesday night and released as an album because he performed them much better in concert than on record.

He augmented those numbers with expected hits such as J.J. Cale`s Cocaine, So Wonderful, Lay Down Sally and an inspired version of his own signature tune, Layla. But he also threw in a few surprises. Reaching back to his days with Cream, he pulled Badge out of his substantial repertoire and after a fiery solo by guitarist Tim Renwick segued right into Let It Rain. On Never Make You Cry, a song from his new album, Clapton demonstrated a surprising sensitivity and proficiency on guitar synthesizer.

He also let his two backup singers, Marcy Levy and Shaun Murphy, share the spotlight, allowing each a solo.

But the heart of the night, without a doubt, was Clapton`s love affair with his guitar. Whether playing torrid bursts of notes between verses or weaving long, distinct blues lines, the man was spellbinding.